Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Danger Mouse, 36.

Recovering from a brutal Giants weekend; at least there's still good stuff:

Elizabeth Saunders on Al Gore and Iraq -- plus links to plenty more. I've only read the post, and not the full article, but I suspect I agree entirely (mostly because it sounds pretty similar to what I've said about Gore/Iraq).

While Philip Klein is a skeptic on a GOP shift to a less McCain-like foreign policy.

Perhaps a cheap shot, but fun: Paul Krugman goes all Lincoln on the Republicans.

And Dan Hopkins on messaging and health care reform.

Monday Cranky Blogging 2

Oh, I assume everyone found something to be annoyed by in the Sunday Times Style profile of Al Gore and his family, written by Patrick Healy. Or maybe not; maybe part of it is that I find all things Gore pretty annoying. But here goes:

First, I find it either baffling or very annoying that we're repeatedly told that Al Gore is done with politics...except that he's obviously very active in politics. I mean, "No family member has moved on from the political world more than Al Gore"??? That's what we're told, when we aren't being told about how politically active he is. Or this:

As for rubbing shoulders with the Washington elite, it is so unappealing that Mr. Gore has chosen to skip the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte, N.C., and will instead spend the next two weeks on his cable channel, Current TV, leading the coverage of both major-party conventions from New York.
Offering color commentary in a television studio is a lifetime away from another August convention, just 12 years ago, just before the decline and fall of the House of Gore began. But for Mr. Gore, Current TV is about living in the present; the cut and thrust of politics is the past.

You know what's really far away from the conventions? Playing golf. Going to a ballgame. A business career, perhaps. Jumping out of airplanes. Watching Cheers reruns. Spending two weeks in a TV studio talking about the conventions and orchestrating coverage of the conventions? Not really so far from politics. Far from accepting the nomination, of course, but that would be true no matter what Gore was doing.

On to the second thing that got to me: the premise of the article isn't just that Gore has moved on from politics, but that his family has unexpectedly done so as well. But why should we find that surprising? We're told (by Stephen Hess) that "The Gore family’s move away from politics is a rare one." Really? Where are all the Roosevelts? The Rockefellers, after Jay leaves? The Goldwaters? All of those were multi-generational political dynasties of a sort...until they weren't. And, you know, even with the Kennedys (soon to return to Congress), there are far more Kennedys that haven't entered politics than those who have.

We're also told that "In recent decades, government has been replete with fathers and mothers and their grown children and grandchildren coming in and out of elected office," but in fact dynastic succession has overall declined in Congress -- recent GOP national tickets notwithstanding. Oh, and those national tickets are actually, for better or worse, the norm; they're not some newfangled thing. Just ask Adlai Stevenson, FDR, Taft, B. Harrison, and many, many more.

I suspect that some of this (on all these points) is Al Gore's fault rather than Healy's, but even in the Style section he should still be getting it right. I'll tell you -- it just makes me cranky.

Why Romney Won't Get a Gore-Like "Liar" Rep

Various liberals have been arguing that Mitt Romney is an unusually dishonest politician, and wondering when and whether he'll wind up developing a reputation for it. David S. Bernstein (my brother), a veteran Romney-watcher, made the case that the press is starting to catch on; Greg Sargent is not as optimistic; and Paul Waldman just asks: "When Do Reporters Start Calling Mitt Romney a Liar?

My guess? They're going to have to wait a long time. Partially, it's because I think that to some extent the things they identify (the "apology tour", for example) are really Republican, rather than Romney, inventions. As long as there are birthers out there, it's harder for Romney to look all that truth-challenged. Partly, it's because he's running for president against noted snake-oil salesman and serial fabulist Newt Gingrich. Don't get me started.

But the main thing is that I think the press really has limited capacity for these kinds of stereotypes, and they've already cast Romney for his: he's Richie Rich. And of course, his constant gaffes in support of that image, from the $10K bet to his friends who own NASCAR and NFL teams, just help nail it down.

So Romney isn't going to be cast as Pinocchio, pretty much whatever he does.

We know that these sorts of media-created images effect the way candidates are covered; in 2000, the same exact misstatement would have been covered as an example of George W. Bush's (supposed) stupidity or Al Gore's (supposed) dishonesty. What I'm curious about, however, is how this all plays out with how reporters do the work of covering candidates. Other than finding examples of Gore's "lies" that they could turn into stories, did reporters covering Al Gore in 2000 actually act more suspicious of everything he said? Or was that mostly just for show? You can see where I'm going here -- could Romney develop a reputation for casual  dishonesty among the press corps, even if it's not the way they portray him? I don't really know the answer to that one, but I'd like to know.

One's a Born Liar and the Other's Contorted?

Brendan Nyhan had a good post yesterday about Mitt Romney and the press, but I especially recommend Paul Waldman's follow-up, for two reasons. First, Waldman is very good on the whole question of authenticity, and whether it matters or not. Second, Waldman is right -- the problematic press story about Gore in 2000 wasn't so much the "authenticity" question, but the idea that Gore was a habitual liar (the parallel story about George W. Bush was that he was stupid). What was especially annoying to me about the Gore thing is that it was really entirely based on nothing, unlike, say, the stories told about Bill Clinton in 1992 (undisciplined, ambitious) and John Kerry in 2004 (inconsistent -- that one was exaggerated, but not totally phony). Why annoying to me? Because I've never like Al Gore very much, so I didn't like having to defend him again the charge (I never minded defending Bush against the charge of stupidity, because I had a good counter-story ready. Didn't have one of those for Gore).

My finding things annoying aside, the big takeaway from this isn't whether or not the press gets these things "wrong" -- that is, it's not about whether or not Mitt Romney is authentic. The point is that once they adopt that frame, anything that happens is interpreted through it -- so if Al Gore in 2000 said something factually incorrect it was always about Gore as a liar, whereas when Bush in 2000 said something factually incorrect, it was about Bush being too stupid to know the difference. Part of interpreting the press -- that is, part of following campaigns and politicians intelligently, since we all do it through the press -- involves identifying these sorts of things, realizing when they drive coverage, and discounting appropriately in response.